Winners of StoryHive competition - Lead and Follow: a short film based on a true story

I met with Krista Rand and Orsy Szabo in Victoria Park, where they spoke in depth and publicly for the first time about their film “Lead and Follow.” When I asked what inspired the film, Orsy looks at Krista in an unspoken gesture that it’s her answer here – because while it is based on her own experience with love, it could also be based on yours.

Lead and Follow embodies the truth of what makes us human – to love, to let go, and the courage it takes to truly be vulnerable along that journey. It leads the viewer through an evening that ends a marriage, and opens the possibility of a new life.

The women were one of the ten teams who won $10,000 towards their project from StoryHive – a new film competition with a voting campaign, and a huge reason for making Lead and Follow possible.

Krista: StoryHive is sponsored by Telus, which is fantastic, and they held a film competition – we had to harass our friends and family and anyone who believed in us –

Orsy: Someone might have broken Facebook, I didn’t have enough friends, I tried.

Krista: Over a course of three and a half weeks it was a voting campaign, we shot a video pitch and basically through that people were able to see what the film was about and then they could vote. There were 70 submissions, and 10 teams won. And we were one of those teams.

Orsy: And the great part is, we also have a distribution deal – so once we hand in our film it will be out there for the world to see. Usually that takes a long time, but within three months people will be able to see it.

Krista: It’s exciting, at the very beginning we wanted to do what everybody else does, make a short film for the money that you can scrounge up, and then put it into festivals, let it do its run, cross your fingers, hope for a distribution deal, but this around we were like…